"I call this book a novoir--a memoir with true characters and actual dialogue, but with the structure and stylistic elements of a novel. It is my story and that of my mentor Anaïs Nin, intertwined as we were, based on her diaries, published and unpublished, and on mine. I have taken liberties with chronology, point of view, and dramatization of events, disguised a few identities, and used novelistic devices to quicken the narrative--but the emotional...